


a mouthful of bitter gin

by braithwaites



Series: the hounds of hades [7]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Banter, Drinking, F/M, Not Quite First Kiss, Sunrises, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 21:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braithwaites/pseuds/braithwaites
Summary: Hosea tipped the bottle forward again, but this time, he kept it in-hand. More pointing it at her than offering it to her.“To you, Miss Juniper, for being such a fine companion.”





	a mouthful of bitter gin

“To the roads, long and dusty though they may be.”

Juniper Scott worked her hands gently around the reins that pulled against her palms. She felt every rock on the road from where she sat, leading a set of horses with Hosea at her side. The board of wood didn't make for good sitting, but she wasn't about to complain.

Her sweetheart of a mother gave her her bony ass. The very least she could do was not whine about it.

Hosea balanced a bottle of gin on his knee, one of his boots hitched up onto the footboard. Whether or not he'd given much attention to the liquor in his care, she didn't know for certain, but he was talking like he'd taken more than a few sips already.

Every new sentence was another salute as they made their way back to camp in the not-quite-dark.

“To Dutch, Arthur, and the other men and women who make up this outfit,” Hosea continued, humming around a few of the words as he spoke.

Out of the corner of Juniper's eye, she saw him lift the bottle to his mouth and take the smallest of swallows. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't anywhere _close_ to drunk, but there was something loose about the way he carried himself, something warm and comfortable.

Their job hadn't even been a close call. They were in and out with fifty dollars, a pocket watch, and a paid bounty in no longer than half an hour, even at almost sunrise.

And there was the gin.

Hosea pilfered it out of one of the cabinets in the station. She halfway expected them to be armed to the teeth, with cupboards full of handcuffs and truncheons. Not gin, cigarette cards, and old bounty listings.

Gripping onto the reins with one hand, Juniper settled her ridge top hat more firmly on top of her head. If she lost it to a gust of wind or a nasty jolt, that would be the only failure of the job, all because she didn't much care for the scratch of a stampede string on her cheeks.

“Is there anything you'd like to drink to?” Hosea asked her, tipping the bottle of gin in her direction. He wore a smile on his narrow-lipped mouth, and the lines around his eyes deepened. “You deserve a sip, if nothing else, for indulging me.”

“Don't care for gin,” Juniper muttered. “Don't care for drinking while handlin' the horses, neither.”

She coaxed those very horses into turning around a bend in the dirt road. The wheels crested over a divot of dried mud, jostling the carriage and those riding on it more than the horses. She bounced forward, then back, slamming her ass down against the flat seat with a wince. Her teeth clicked painfully hard.

She glanced in Hosea's direction to see that the heave of the carriage hadn't disturbed him at all. He still held the gin in his hand, one of his boots hooked on the footboard and a growing smile on his face. He hadn't spilled a single finger of the liquor.

Juniper clucked her tongue and gave her head a shake, which just got a laugh out of him. His laugh was sharper than the others she'd gotten used to over her years with the Van der Linde gang. Dutch's laugh was like whiskey. Arthur's, honey. Miss Grimshaw had a laugh like a handsaw, and Tilly's was a bell.

Hosea's laugh was like a sharp November wind, like fingers dragging through her hair.

He tipped the bottle forward again, but this time, he kept it in-hand. More pointing it at her than offering it to her.

“To you, Miss Juniper, for being such a fine companion.”

The sun was barely high enough to be anything more than a sliver of yellow behind the mountains, but the sky had turned from the charcoal black of night to shades of blue and pink and orange, like one of Miss Glanville's little paintings. She'd never noticed all those colors until watching her work. It was a lot to go through to make a sky look like a sky.

There was color in her cheeks, too, under all the dirt from the road and the spray of moles and freckles that left her looking even worse for wear. She reached up to her hat again, tugging it down a little farther over her eyes.

“You shut your mouth, Hosea.” She threw her chin in the direction of the horses. “You'll spook 'em with your nonsense.”

And then, quietly: “ _Fine companion_. Please.”

Hosea took another swallow of the gin and made a sucking noise on his teeth just after. The stuff must have been potent, if it was getting a rise out of him. He couldn't hold a candle to Karen, but anyone with his experience could put away a strong drink.

“Do you suppose I'm speaking false?” he asked her, leaning one of his elbows against a narrow thigh and a sharp knee. “What would I stand to gain from lying to you?”

They both ducked to avoid the low-hanging arm of a ponderosa pine. The branch soared just above the top of her hat; she could hear the scrape of pine needles as they passed.

“You don't stand to gain nothin',” Juniper agreed. Her fingers curled around the reins again, but she didn't pull at them. The horses maintained their steady pace as the sun rose and Hosea nursed that bottle of gin. “Doesn't mean you don't just talk to listen to the sound of your own voice. And to fluster me.”

Hosea's white brows shot up on his forehead, sending a wave of wrinkles into his sun-damaged skin. Still, even in his surprise, he smiled. “You've got me there, I'm afraid.”

Juniper rolled her eyes, but felt a smile curl at the corner of her mouth. Even such a little thing was enough for Hosea to count himself as the winner.

He took a long swallow from the bottle. Sucked his teeth. Turned to her.

“There's no one here, Juniper,” Hosea murmured, his arm laying across the low back of the seat. He didn't touch over her spine or hold onto her shoulder, just drew them a little closer together. “You don't have any reason to put on airs, as if we aren't sweet on each other.”

Juniper glanced over at him, though she didn't keep her eyes off of the road for very long.

“You've gone and painted your nose.”

He laughed again, bright and sharp. Her scalp tingled and a heat rose up in her narrow cheeks.

“I am **not** drunk.” As if to prove a point, Hosea returned the stopper to the green glass bottle he held on his person. Not more than three mouthfuls were gone, hardly enough to get lightweights like Kieran or Tilly wasted. “I am in control of my faculties, and I say that you are a _fine_ companion, Juniper Scott.”

They weren't lovers, but they were something. Juniper didn't know if there was a word for what they had.

What they had was stolen kisses behind the saloon, the brush of her hand over his while they were out in the boat. What they had could be summed up in a number of looks, a few secret smiles, and the painful way her heart shot off whenever he passed close beside her.

More than that meant navigating waters she wasn't brave enough to enter. She could stare down a bounty hunter or a bounty without flinching. She could take a rifle to a man at a hundred yards. She could ride anything you put a saddle on. But she didn't know what it was like to love a man who'd loved before, a man who had been tempered by grief.

“I like workin' with you,” Juniper offered. “I know that's not what you're on about, but... I do.”

“Is that all?” Hosea asked her. His voice was too soft around the edges to sound demanding about it. He knew better than to speak in such a way to her. It just put her on edge. That lesson was one Dutch hadn't learned yet. Or, he'd just forgotten it when it suited him. “Is there anything else you'd like to say before we get back to camp?”

Juniper let up on the horses, slowing them down to a steady trot. She didn't have to watch the road quite so carefully if she held them at that pace.

Turning on the seat drew them even closer together. So close, in fact, that Juniper could see every line and every broken vein and every bit of stubble on Hosea's handsome face. Everyone knew what he looked like as a young man. The picture was passed around now and then of the three at the beginning of all of this, when they were all young and good-looking and bruised rather than broken.

But she preferred how he looked now, and when a charming smile spread over his face, she liked him even more.

Loved him, even. Maybe.

Passing the reins into one of her hands, Juniper rested the other one on the side of his face before drawing herself up to plant a kiss right on his mouth.

Hosea response was immediate. He pressed deeper into the kiss, tasting of nothing in particular until she felt the eager pull of his tongue over her bottom lip. The truth was that she hated gin, but didn't mind it like that.

In his eagerness, his forehead pushed up the brim of her hat, farther and farther until a rush of wind blew it right off, just as she feared.

Juniper jerked her head to the side, prepared to watch it land into the stretch of dirt road behind them, but there it was, held in one of Hosea's hands, caught before it could hit the ground.

She took the hat from him and pushed it back down on top of her head with an overwhelmed chuckle.

Hosea's fingers settled at the nape of her neck, tucked easily beneath the tail of ginger hair that hung over her collar.

“That was all on me, June,” he said. The words were a peace offering, for her hat, for guiding her a step farther than they'd gone before. Whether he realized how badly she wanted it or not, she couldn't tell. Probably. “Again, many thanks for indulging me.”

The carriage veered off of the road and onto the beaten path that led up to their camp at Horseshoe Overlook. There was a tent and a bedroll waiting for her, a late breakfast, an afternoon thinking about Hosea and the kiss and her hat, saved at the last moment by a quick set of hands.

“Don't thank me for a kiss,” Juniper murmured, rolling one of her shoulders as she leaned forward. She planted her feet a little far apart to keep herself steady as they got farther away from the road. “For my help tonight, sure, but not a kiss. Surely not one I gave you.”

Hosea summoned up a sound at the back of his throat. Thoughtful, and a little curious, too.

“That's fair.”

Over the folded collar of her shirt, she looked into his eyes. They were a soft and quiet color, and they stared at her like she'd never been stared at, as if she was as pretty as Karen or Molly O'Shea.

They were at the camp before Juniper could bring herself to say something. Miss Grimshaw was already up and working alongside Pearson to get breakfast ready for everyone. Dutch sat at his mirror, dragging a straight razor across his jaw, and Miss Madelaine sat close by, caught in a yawn as she worked a braid into her long, blonde hair.

Everyone's attention turned to them as the horses slowed to a stop, and Juniper shifted herself on the wooden board of a seat, an ache climbing up her spine. The ache couldn't even begin to contend with the feeling of dread that bubbled up inside of her as Hosea pulled himself up onto his feet.

But, before he climbed down from the seat, he did something she hadn't expected or demanded in all their months of whatever it was they were.

Hosea leaned down and removed the hat he'd saved just to leave a kiss on the top of her head. He put it right back and pulled away with a quiet, “Goodnight to you, Miss June,” before climbing down and leaving her there to tend to the horses while he tended to Dutch.

Juniper blinked dumbly before rubbed the heel of her palm over her cheek. The skin there was dirty, but it was burning up, too.

One by one, everyone turned away from the carriage and away from Juniper Scott with her wildly red cheeks. Their morning business was more important. Apparently, it wasn't much of a surprise to any of them.

 _To you, Hosea Matthews_ , she thought to herself, wishing she had a mouthful of bitter gin to wash everything down.

 _You're something else_.


End file.
